How to write a resume that will make it through the recruiter’s screening systems

and help you get interviews

You might have experienced this situation a numerous times: you come across an interesting job position, you apply by submitting your resume, but never hear back from the company until you see an email in your inbox saying something like this: ‘Although you have good qualifications, we’ve decided to pursue other candidates who fit our requirements more precisely’ or ‘Although your skill-set was not a direct match for our current needs…’. Sounds familiar ?

There are several reasons that could have led to this, maybe an actual human read through your resume and arrived at this decision that you don’t fit the requirements or the position was just too competitive with too many good applicants or chances are that your resume just din’t make it through the recruiter’s screening system/tool. For the later case, if your profile wasn’t an actual match you can increase your prospects by gaining some relevant experience/skills or by applying for jobs that are a better fit. But if you have relevant profile for the job, the reasons listed below could be some of the contributors for why you dint get that interview call:

(a) your resume was poorly written / formatted for the parser to extract any information out of it.
(b) you missed out on mentioning important keywords or skills which the employers are looking for, or
(c) the job titles etc. you’ve held are non-conventional and are not recognized by the screening system (e.g. Technical Associate instead of Software Engineer)

If you think your resume falls under these points the list of suggestion below can be helpful. But before we get to that you might want to know how the resume is actually parsed and how recruiters filter them (if you already know about it, just skip to the section titled ‘Tips for writing resumes that parse’). Parsing means extracting information from a resume and converting it into a structures format so that it can be conveniently utilized, algorithms or tools which do this process are known as parsers. Let me quickly summarize the different approaches parsers adopt and how they work.

Types of resume or CV parsers:

• Keyword based parsers: Simplest type of parser and the least accurate. They work by identifying keywords and patterns in the resume. E.g. if they find words such as ‘University’, it could lead to an inference that the surrounding text is Education related. The accuracy is about 50-70% for these types of parsers. (note: manually screened resumes are less than 95% accurate)
• Grammar based parsers: They function based on the grammar rules set to make sense out of the text. These type of parsers are more accurate than the keyword based ones and can be good enough to parse about 85-90% of the information.
• Statistical parsers: These parsers use sophisticated methods such as natural language processing (nlp) to extract information out of a cv or resume. Statistical parsers are the most accurate (upto 93% accuracy)

Now that we are familiar with the types of parsing, lets really quickly look into How recruiters search candidates from their applicant tracking systems or other tools. Many of the existing tools offer keyword based search filters, so recruiters either search using the Job titles or use multiple filters such as skills, education, location etc. There is something known as ‘Boolean search’ in which multiple keywords are used separated by AND, OR. e.g. Software Developer AND (Java or Perl).

With all fundamentals covered, lets dive into how to format resumes or CV’s that parse:

Tips for writing resumes that parse and clear the screening system

1. Section Labels: The typically included sections in a resume are Summary, Work Experience, Education, Skills etc. Make sure that you label them that way in a clearly representative manner instead of saying something like ‘Here’s what I did’, ‘I studied here’ etc.
2. Job Titles: Many companies have non-conventional job titles, for e.g Microsoft titles their Product managers as ‘Program managers’, Yahoo has a job title named ‘Technical Yahoo’. I have also seen a company which has a title ‘Rocket Scientist’ and no relation whatsoever to rockets. To give a generic example, Software Developer is also termed as Technical Associate, Programmer, Developer, Technical Consultant, Software Engineer etc. So it is better to mention your job role in a generic terminology. Also avoid using job titles of your superiors or others in your job description e.g. Worked with Project manager, Supervised a Junior Engineer. Although some of the parsers might be able to understand that they are the people you worked with, better avoided.
3. Education: Clearly list the degree you achieved, your University, dates and GPA if you like. Also it would help if you use commonly known degrees instead of writing specific majors. Also refrain from including university names in other sections such as awards etc.. E.g. ‘Participated in X competition at Y university’. It might be misinterpreted for your education
4. No Images please: Make sure none of your important information is in the form of images. Very few tools are able to extract information out of images. If you have to use an image you can also have text surrounding it.
5. Keywords: Having the required keywords in your resume if incredibly helpful, but it doesn’t mean that you should just stuff keywords or worse — fake keywords. Recruiters do not like it when you do that. What you should do is describe your work or projects and in the process mention the skills, tools, technologies etc. that were a part of that experience. Also explain the abbreviations you use so that they get parsed and the hiring personnel get an idea of what you actually did. Some recruiters prefer to have a Skills or Keywords section in the resume, but this may not be the case with all of them.
6. Frequency of keywords: If you are interested in a Software related position and most of your background is, for e.g., mechanical engineering related, try using lesser ratio of keywords for an unrelated field. This will increase the % of relevant keywords in your profile. Many applicants only mention relevant work experience and projects (and also label the sections that way). But if you have something which really stands out, don’t hesitate to mention that. You could probably try to tie it into reflecting how your past unrelated experience could be helpful for the position you aspire.
7. Sequence of words: If you have a job title which says something like this: ‘Owner, Founder and Developer’, chances are that only the first word is picked up. So if you are targeting a specific position mention the important words first. And as discussed in tip no. 3, use generic titles, this is because the tools count the level of experience you have (e.g. entry level, manager, etc.) and by no including the right words you may just miss out on that minimum managerial experience filter even though you have it.
8. Layout of resume/cv: Keep the resume in a simple format instead of twisting it around an messing it up. By simple I mean one section per row instead of creating multiple columns with unrelated information e.g Work experience, Hobbies, Projects all mixed up.
9. Type of file (e.g. pdf. docx): This is a very important point. Although the resume parsing tools support numerous formats, its better to upload your resume in commonly used formats. .txt. .doc(x) files are most easy to parse, pdf’s are also common but extracting information out of them may not be as accurate as txt files. You can try pasting your resume in txt file and check if the line breaks and spaces work as intended. Some of the application systems will also show the text extracted from your uploaded file, make sure you check that.
10. General tips: There are numerous other factors which can contribute in making it though the screening tools as well as recruiter’s eyes, but there are some of them you could keep in mind: mention the related data together (e.g. job title, dates, description together), include the name of reputed companies you have worked for (recruiters specifically search using those keywords), include adjectives and verbs to support the work you have done (e.g. Led, responsible for, acted as, conducted, performed..).

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